Dunking on rookie collectors

[RH | 4,990]

26 minutes ago, TDIRunner said:

I never deliberately try to dunk on new collectors, but at the same time, I can understand why some people can get annoyed by it.  If you've been collecting long enough, it can become tiresome to see the same first time collector questions over and over again.  They obviously don't mean any harm by it, but you can only answer those same questions so many times before you start to lose interest.  But in those cases, it's better to just ignore the questions rather than act hostile.  

One possible exception is new collectors who are actively causing harm to the community.  I specifically remember a thread at the old PC Engine forums (before it imploded) about a new collector who had a long introduction explaining how he had started at zero and purchased about 95% of the US TG16 set over the course of about 6 months.  He then explained that once he realized that he would never be able to own every game in the set, he immediately decided to sell his collection and wanted to unload it on the forum for top dollar.  That forum was already well known for being fairly hostile towards new collectors, but they really went off on this guy.  I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little entertained by the backlash.  

As an aside, this is when I started with my sets, I start at the top and try to knock out everything over $100.

Man... you've got to do your research.  Who goes into a set like the TG-16 and not know about Magical Chase?!  Or to put it differently, who doesn't estimate their costs for such an endeavor, even if you're hopeful you'll snag good deals?

[TDIRunner | 2,781]

3 minutes ago, RH said:

Who goes into a set like the TG-16 and not know about Magical Chase?!  

Who knows?  But the thing that really turned me off from that "collector," was the mentality of "if I can't own every game in the set, I don't want to own any of it."  It's such a toxic mindset and it's the type of new collector that makes you want to hate on all new collectors even if 99% don't deserve the hate.  

[Hammerfestus | 3,900]

3 minutes ago, TDIRunner said:

Who knows?  But the thing that really turned me off from that "collector," was the mentality of "if I can't own every game in the set, I don't want to own any of it."  It's such a toxic mindset and it's the type of new collector that makes you want to hate on all new collectors even if 99% don't deserve the hate.  

That’s not how I collect (or can afford to collect) but why the hate?  Is it the old anti-speed collector thing?  I mean I can certainly think of a time where I was buying every game that my bank account allowed.  I’m genuinely not getting why there’s be that much backlash.

[TDIRunner | 2,781]

1 minute ago, Hammerfestus said:

That’s not how I collect (or can afford to collect) but why the hate?  Is it the old anti-speed collector thing?  I mean I can certainly think of a time where I was buying every game that my bank account allowed.  I’m genuinely not getting why there’s be that much backlash.

It not the speed collection alone.  It's the in and out in such a short time frame never to be heard from again.  Such a person contributes nothing to the community except for increasing prices.  As I've mentioned before, I try to allow everyone to collect in their own way and I try to be as open minded as possible.  But I still have my limits.  

[Hammerfestus | 3,900]

Just now, TDIRunner said:

It not the speed collection alone.  It's the in and out in such a short time frame never to be heard from again.  Such a person contributes nothing to the community except for increasing prices.  As I've mentioned before, I try to allow everyone to collect in their own way and I try to be as open minded as possible.  But I still have my limits.  

It‘s not going to be long term for everyone and I don’t feel like it has to be.  I get into stuff all the time where I get super obsessed, burn out, and move on.  I’m also not going hold increasing prices against some rando day collector.  Am I going to bond with this guy?  Probably not.  But I’m also not going to chase him away.

[Ankos | 468]

I don't think I've ever dunked on a new collector, but I've definitely made suggestions when I saw things that I thought could be done better. Usually to the effect of "If you put in a bit more time and do X, Y, and Z you'll be able to get more stuff for cheaper". If they don't like the suggestion then I just move on. I will skim over posts I find uninteresting, but I think to some extent everyone does that

I'm not at the point where I need to chase people away to reduce the competition...yet

[TDIRunner | 2,781]

29 minutes ago, Hammerfestus said:

But I’m also not going to chase him away.

In my example, no one chased him away.  He came and went on his own accord in less time that it takes to complete a baseball season.  

[ikk | 560]

When I started collecting a little over a decade ago I joined a couple of communities and stayed with the 1 I liked. You can find communities for (mostly) new collectors, veterans and mixed and it's up to you to find the community that suits you. If you just start and join a community for veterans I don't think it's their fault if they're not welcoming to all your newbie questions.

 

18 hours ago, DarkKobold said:

I feel like Reddit in particular is pretty newbie centric. The majority of people say things like "I wouldn't spend more than $70 on a game!" which feels like a very newbie centric mentality. Any decently rare, fun game is gonna be over $100 at this point.

I couldn't disagree more, nothing wrong with setting a limit for yourself that makes sense for your budget no matter how long you've been collecting and there's plenty of great games out there that can be found for under $70. You don't have to chase rare/expensive stuff to be a collector.

[Hammerfestus | 3,900]

2 hours ago, TDIRunner said:

In my example, no one chased him away.  He came and went on his own accord in less time that it takes to complete a baseball season.  

 

3 hours ago, TDIRunner said:

.  That forum was already well known for being fairly hostile towards new collectors, but they really went off on this guy.  I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little entertained by the backlash.  

 

[TDIRunner | 2,781]

4 minutes ago, Hammerfestus said:

 

 

As mentioned in my first post, he announced his exit before any of the hostility.  

Edited March 20 by TDIRunner

[DarkKobold | 196]

2 hours ago, ikk said:

I couldn't disagree more, nothing wrong with setting a limit for yourself that makes sense for your budget no matter how long you've been collecting and there's plenty of great games out there that can be found for under $70. You don't have to chase rare/expensive stuff to be a collector.

I think this is absolutely 100% correct, and I didn't mean this to be judgmental,  just observational. 

I doubt your method is the "norm." I think the longer someone has been collecting, the more likely it is they have every game under $70 they want. This means that most collectors thresholds increase over time. There's absolutely space in collecting communities for every type of collector, including the ones that only want games under a certain threshold... in fact, I think it's fair to say all of us have a threshold, it's just that, over time, you get every game you want, so most longer-term collectors have a threshold higher than $70 for a single game. Thus, for a community that is mostly newbie collectors, I'd assume their threshold is lower, because they have yet to acquire every game under that threshold. 

 

[DarkKobold | 196]

4 hours ago, TDIRunner said:

One possible exception is new collectors who are actively causing harm to the community.  I specifically remember a thread at the old PC Engine forums (before it imploded) about a new collector who had a long introduction explaining how he had started at zero and purchased about 95% of the US TG16 set over the course of about 6 months.  He then explained that once he realized that he would never be able to own every game in the set, he immediately decided to sell his collection and wanted to unload it on the forum for top dollar.  That forum was already well known for being fairly hostile towards new collectors, but they really went off on this guy.  I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little entertained by the backlash.  

That entire forum was insanely toxic to new collectors and newer fans of the TG16. Many of the old timers tried to chase me off because I had the audacity to claim that increasing demand was due to more people entering the market, and not due to an evil conspiracy of eBay sellers trying to raise prices. A lot of the people who tried to chase me off have long since left the scene, while I've created homebrew for the TG16. 

[Hammerfestus | 3,900]

56 minutes ago, TDIRunner said:

As mentioned in my first post, he announced his exit before any of the hostility.  

Ahh skimmed that bit.  Sorry.  If I’m honest I’m going to clown on him later too lol.

[TDIRunner | 2,781]

20 hours ago, DarkKobold said:

That entire forum was insanely toxic to new collectors and newer fans of the TG16. Many of the old timers tried to chase me off because I had the audacity to claim that increasing demand was due to more people entering the market, and not due to an evil conspiracy of eBay sellers trying to raise prices. A lot of the people who tried to chase me off have long since left the scene, while I've created homebrew for the TG16. 

I 100% agree.  My involvement with that site was very limited, and I was more of a lurker than a poster.  Over 5 years, I probably had around 300 posts.  I saw lots of newcomers get pushed out, but I was able to tip toe my way around to site and avoid most of the hostility.  I actually made a bit of a game with it.  I attempted to see how long I could go without triggering anyone.  I only made one mistake in my time there.  In a thread about Legos of all things, in a lapse of judgement, I mentioned that all of my Lego sets from my childhood had been keep in their original boxes, and I never combined my sets together into one large bin of Legos.  Oh boy, was that a mistake.  I honestly don't remember who, but one of the long time members really let me know how shitty it was of me to treat my Legos like that.  

I've said this before, but after that forum imploded from the rogue mod, I specifically remember thinking about how nice it was knowing that nothing like that could ever happen to NintendoAge.  Less than 12 months later, I ended up eating those words.  

Edited March 21 by TDIRunner

[DefaultGen | 5,452]

I’ve backed away from most collecting communities (just cutting back internet usage in general) but I don’t see much negativity towards other collectors except on Reddit where people circle like wolves if you stray outside the dank Goodwill pickups and only collecting to play hivemind.

The top post right now is a guy who got sent the wrong game from Wata and literally half the comments are just calling OP an idiot, lol. Terrible place.

[GPX | 1,374]

I don’t dunk on any collectors because I rather use my time better to game, collect and to post whacky threads for fun. 

Admittedly, my patience isn’t the same as where it was around 10 years ago. Newcomers who only asks questions (eg. prices? are these reseals?) without contributing to the forum, I don’t bother to reply these days. 

[Gentlegamer | 174]

18 hours ago, TDIRunner said:

One possible exception is new collectors who are actively causing harm to the community.  I specifically remember a thread at the old PC Engine forums (before it imploded) about a new collector who had a long introduction explaining how he had started at zero and purchased about 95% of the US TG16 set over the course of about 6 months.  He then explained that once he realized that he would never be able to own every game in the set, he immediately decided to sell his collection and wanted to unload it on the forum for top dollar.  That forum was already well known for being fairly hostile towards new collectors, but they really went off on this guy.  I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little entertained by the backlash.  

My friends at pcenginefx were based. This is the correct response to such.

[DarkKobold | 196]

1 hour ago, Gentlegamer said:

My friends at pcenginefx were based. This is the correct response to such.

No, they weren't. You are an example of the toxic mindset of that forum that thankfully went away. I was hoping you would too. All you ever do is create forum accounts, and shout "collectard" at anyone who dares to collect video games. At one point, if you googled that word, you came up with like 18 different forum accounts of GentleGamer where your main contribution was to shout that word, without offering even one iota of valuable contribution. They weren't "based," they were just judgmental assholes who had ideas on how everyone else should live. Grow up, and let people live the way they want. 

12 hours ago, TDIRunner said:

I 100% agree.  My involvement with that site was very limited, and I was more of a lurker than a poster.  Over 5 years, I probably had around 300 posts.  I saw lots of newcomers get pushed out, but I was able to tip toe my way around to site and avoid most of the hostility.  I actually made a bit of a game with it.  I attempted to see how long I could go without triggering anyone.  I only made one mistake in my time there.  In a thread about Legos of all things, in a lapse of judgement, I mentioned that all of my Lego sets from my childhood had been keep in their original boxes, and I never combined my sets together into one large bin of Legos.  Oh boy, was that a mistake.  I honestly don't remember who, but one of the long time members really let me know how shitty it was of me to treat my Legos like that.  

I went and found the thread in question. It's sad, because that particular member was respected in that community at that time, but honestly is the most annoying, fedora-tipping, dumb-opinion-wielding people to grace the gaming hobby. I have countless examples of that individual spouting off dumb opinions to appear as an elitist hipster. Yelling at someone for how they play with LEGO is about as dumb as you can get. It's a toy, it is meant to be played with however the person who purchases it wants to play with it. 

At one point, I wanted to show off my TAS speedruns. I  got a very similar response of "How dare you play video games this way? You're supposed to play them normally!" It was beyond frustratingly stupid. It's a toy, how you get joy from it is your own dammed business.

I may have a bit of residual anger from the old days of that forum. 

 

[glazball | 172]

I remember that @DarkKobold!  It was actually the first time I'd heard of a TAS, and your run of Dungeon Explorer was probably the first I ever watched lol.  I left that site too because of a jerk moderator who I won't name.  But to be fair, there were MANY great people there who are/were decent folk.  There used to be lots of raffles where people would give away games (I raffled a loose Cadash and Super Star Soldier myself) and you just don't see that anywhere anymore.  Yes, there were some who were ugly towards new TG collectors, but in some cases it was certainly justified (people just wanting deals on games but not seeming to care about the games themselves).

Edited March 21 by glazball

[TDIRunner | 2,781]

58 minutes ago, DarkKobold said:

I went and found the thread in question. It's sad, because that particular member was respected in that community at that time, but honestly is the most annoying, fedora-tipping, dumb-opinion-wielding people to grace the gaming hobby. I have countless examples of that individual spouting off dumb opinions to appear as an elitist hipster. Yelling at someone for how they play with LEGO is about as dumb as you can get. It's a toy, it is meant to be played with however the person who purchases it wants to play with it. 

I didn't even think about trying to find the thread.  Since I was going completely off memory, you had me wondering if my account of the story was mostly accurate, so I just went to see if I could find it, and it was actually a little worse then I remember.  Hard to believe that was almost 7 years ago.  I specifically remember thinking I had about a 50/50 chance of surviving the forum after writing my reply.  Obviously, I didn't get banned, probably because I chose to make one reply and leave it at that.  I don't regret any of what I said in that thread.  Sorry you had to go through a similar experience.

Edited March 21 by TDIRunner

[Link | 2,752]

STFU

[a3quit4s | 4,128]

16 hours ago, TDIRunner said:

I 100% agree.  My involvement with that site was very limited, and I was more of a lurker than a poster.  Over 5 years, I probably had around 300 posts.  I saw lots of newcomers get pushed out, but I was able to tip toe my way around to site and avoid most of the hostility.  I actually made a bit of a game with it.  I attempted to see how long I could go without triggering anyone.  I only made one mistake in my time there.  In a thread about Legos of all things, in a lapse of judgement, I mentioned that all of my Lego sets from my childhood had been keep in their original boxes, and I never combined my sets together into one large bin of Legos.  Oh boy, was that a mistake.  I honestly don't remember who, but one of the long time members really let me know how shitty it was of me to treat my Legos like that.  

I've said this before, but after that forum imploded from the rogue mod, I specifically remember thinking about how nice it was knowing that nothing like that could ever happen to NintendoAge.  Less than 12 months later, I ended up eating those words.  

Gotta make you happy that dude is banned now and his title is raging lunatic haha

edit: his profile bio is also epically written by the mod that banned him. It’s….the greatest story ever told

Edited March 21 by a3quit4s

[TDIRunner | 2,781]

1 minute ago, a3quit4s said:

Gotta make you happy that dude is banned now and his title is raging lunatic haha

Unfortunately it doesn't, because I know why he was banned.  

[DarkKobold | 196]

6 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

Gotta make you happy that dude is banned now and his title is raging lunatic haha

edit: his profile bio is also epically written by the mod that banned him. It’s….the greatest story ever told

NO!

That's on the duplicate forum from the admin who went apeshit. He straight out lies and makes up stories. Do NOT go to his new site,  instead go to pcenginefans.com, that's where the majority of the community went. If your IP Address is from Utah, you'll get a face full of bestiality if you visit his site, specifically because he hates me so much. His particular clone site of the original PCEngineFX is dead because he alienated so much of the community. In fact, most of the long time community members have their own insane ranting screed on that site. 

Note, that particular person (we'll call him nutterpants) was given admin privileges by the founder, Aaron Nanto. Nanto went AWOL, and then came back to a burned down forum thanks to that particular lunatic. He tried to regain the forum, and removed the admin privileges of nutterpants and banned him from the forums. However, in true lunatic fashion, nutterpants decided to install a backdoor into the website prior to his own removal, and then managed to ban Nanto from his own site. Nanto was able to regain control at some point, but it really shows the level of insanity the community was dealing with. It's a fascinating story how that particular admin, nutterpants, destroyed the community. 

[TDIRunner | 2,781]

@a3quit4s when I said this:

27 minutes ago, TDIRunner said:

Unfortunately it doesn't, because I know why he was banned.  

 

I was referring to this:

13 minutes ago, DarkKobold said:

NO!

That's on the duplicate forum from the admin who went apeshit. He straight out lies and makes up stories. Do NOT go to his new site,  instead go to pcenginefans.com, that's where the majority of the community went. If your IP Address is from Utah, you'll get a face full of bestiality if you visit his site, specifically because he hates me so much. His particular clone site of the original PCEngineFX is dead because he alienated so much of the community. In fact, most of the long time community members have their own insane ranting screed on that site. 

Note, that particular person (we'll call him nutterpants) was given admin privileges by the founder, Aaron Nanto. Nanto went AWOL, and then came back to a burned down forum thanks to that particular lunatic. He tried to regain the forum, and removed the admin privileges of nutterpants and banned him from the forums. However, in true lunatic fashion, nutterpants decided to install a backdoor into the website prior to his own removal, and then managed to ban Nanto from his own site. Nanto was able to regain control at some point, but it really shows the level of insanity the community was dealing with. It's a fascinating story how that particular admin, nutterpants, destroyed the community. 

I was just too lazy to go into the detail.

Edited March 21 by TDIRunner